The Universe in Verse 2019: Full Program

Each spring, I sign up with forces with my buddies at Pioneer Works for an improbable idea that started in 2017 and has handled a life of its own: Deep Space in Verse— a charitable celebration of the science and elegance of nature through poetry.

With our sleeves rolled up and sweat-soaked in preparation for the 2020 virtual edition(” trailer” here), and with the world shocked and stilled and wanting to fill the blur of days under quarantine with something of compound and succor, we have released the full recording of the 2019 show, celebrating the 100 th anniversary of Sir Arthur Eddington’s historic eclipse expedition to Africa, which verified relativity and catapulted Einstein into star. “Dear Mother, wondrous news today,” Einstein composed upon receiving word of the outcomes, which revolutionized our understanding of the universe and shaped the course of modern-day physics. The clinical victory was likewise a heartening, gentle minute– simply after the close of World War I, a pacifist English Quaker, who had declined to be drafted in the war at the risk of being jailed for treason, and a German Jew joined humankind under the very same sky, under the inmost realities of the universe. An invite to viewpoint in the biggest sense.

The program– a night of poems, music, and stories about eclipses, relativity, spacetime, and Einstein’s tradition, featuring readings by musicians David Byrne, Regina Spektor, Amanda Palmer, Emily Wells, and Josh Groban, astrophysicists Janna Levin and Natalie Batalha, poets Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson, star Natascha McElhone, theoretical cosmologist and jazz saxophonist Stephon Alexander, comedian Chuck Nice, choreographer Costs T. Jones, On Being host Krista Tippett, and the inimitable Neil Gaiman checking out an original poem generously made up for the occasion– was a monumental labor of love, with every individual included donating their time and skill, and all profits from the tickets benefiting Leader Works’ undertaking to construct New york city’s first-ever public observatory, a dome of possibility for future Eddingtons and Einsteins.

Both the costly production and this recording were made possible totally by donations. Please enjoy– and if it provides you some perspective, some relief, perhaps even some rapture, do think about supporting this labor of love with a donation to Leader Functions to balance out some of the expenses, assist us construct that dome of possibility, and make future universes possible.

You can find the complete recordings of previous seasons, and livestream information for the approaching program, on this page

ALSO: My good friends at Leader Functions have actually simply launched their own newsletter, delving into their archives to provide a few of the world’s fiercest and most fertile minds– researchers and artists, Nobel laureates and Pulitzer-winning authors– in conversation and reflection at the edge of our look for fact and our cravings for meaning, straight to your inbox. Be a leader and give it a try— I promise it will be spare and fantastic.